First female pro ball player to tell her story at WIN Luncheon

Friday

Feb 2, 2018 at 6:20 PMFeb 2, 2018 at 6:20 PM

Daniel Jones @daniel_m_jones

Ila Borders wanted to throw overhand.

Nothing against softball. Borders would have been good at that, too. Jennie Finch was her childhood neighbor growing up in La Mirada, Calif., and from time to time Borders would visit Finch’s house to use the windmill softball pitching machine in her backyard.

Maybe it was because Borders’ father played in the Los Angeles Dodgers’ minor league system for four seasons in the 1970s. Maybe it was because, even as a Southern California kid, she idolized the Kansas City Royals and their stars George Brett, Bret Saberhagen and Tom Gordon.

“Gordon, I liked him because I think they had him at 5-foot-10, but he looked to me like 5-9,” Borders said. “I’m 5-9.”

At 10 years old, the desire to throw overhand won out. Borders switched from softball to baseball and went as far as hardball would take her — farther than any other woman has ever gone in the sport.

Borders pitched for four years in professional independent league baseball and is the first woman to earn a men’s collegiate baseball scholarship and the first to earn a win in a professional game. She retired in 2000, finishing with a professional record of 2-4 with a 6.75 ERA and 36 career strikeouts.

Borders will be the featured speaker at the Women’s Intersport Network for Columbia luncheon at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday at the Southwell Complex.

Her decision to play baseball was easy. Its reception in 1985, even at the Little League level, was unkind.

In her first Little League at-bat, the 10-year-old Borders dug in as a 12-year-old toed the pitching rubber. In what would become a recurring trend, the 12-year-old fired inside … and clocked Borders in the head.

“That was my welcome pitch,” she recalled.

Her collegiate on-base percentage was 1.000. Afraid to give up a hit to a girl, or perhaps because of the perceived indignity of having to face one at all, all 11 pitchers whom Borders faced in college plunked her.

She fought that hostility throughout her career, even as outlets around the country clamored to tell her story.

After four years of varsity baseball at Whittier Christian High School, where she was the team MVP as a junior and senior, Borders instantly shined at Southern California College. In her first outing Feb. 15, 1994 — the first outing for any woman in NCAA or NAIA baseball — Borders went the distance in a 12-1 victory.

Borders said she did 73 interviews over the next three days. She appeared on "Good Morning America" and "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno."

For Phillip Borders (Ila’s younger brother by five years), it was never a big deal for his sister to be playing baseball. Then she started appearing on television.

“That was like, wait a second. The people on the Jay Leno show are usually famous actors and stuff like that,” Phillip said.

That attention bred resentment with the team, which was incensed that a freshman girl was suddenly a sensation.

“I went through hell,” Borders said of her freshman year, when her teammates would sometimes hurl baseballs at her back as she shagged fly balls during batting practice.

For the rest of her career, Borders was willing to make an enemy of the media to increase her standing on the team. She doggedly avoided interviews, once turning down the opportunity to appear on "The Late Show with David Letterman."

She didn’t play for the attention. She didn’t go pro just to break barriers. She maintains her goal was like everyone else’s in the minor leagues: to one day make it to the bigs.

The St. Paul Saints provided her first opportunity. In 1997, the Northern League club allowed her to try out with 19 other pitchers, all men, for one of 10 roster spots. The Saints sold out regularly and didn’t need a publicity stunt to sell tickets, so Borders wasn’t treated like one. She’d have to earn her way on the team, like anyone else, and if she did, she’d be held to the same standard as any other pitcher.

Borders, a lefty, threw in the mid-to-high 70s — as high as 83, she claims — and complimented her accuracy with a trusty screwball. St. Paul took her on, starting her four-year career in the Northern League.

“I knew it would never mean anything if we just said, ‘She’s gonna make the team,’” said Mike Veeck, who was and remains one of the Saints’ owners. “She was the last roster spot.”

By avoiding the media and earning her place on the team, Borders quickly amassed support from her professional teammates. But others around the league and in her own organization dismissed her.

Some of Veeck’s ownership partners were against the move. A year later, after the Saints dealt Borders to the Duluth-Superior Dukes, Fargo-Moorhead RedHawks coach Doug Simunic threatened to put his pitchers in the outfield and outfielders in the infield if she started against his team.

When Borders and the Dukes called Simunic’s bluff, he changed course, fielding his regular lineup and No. 1 starting pitcher. Borders threw six scoreless innings against the first-place RedHawks.

“If you go out there and show that you belong, you can get wins, you’re not out there for any other alternative motives than to play baseball … they will — hopefully — eventually come around,” Borders said. “Not everybody does, but a good majority of people will come around.”

Borders struggled for Duluth at the beginning of the 1999 season and was traded to the Madison Black Wolf. She was dominant the rest of the year with Madison, going 1-0 and compiling a 1.67 ERA over 32⅓ innings.

The Cincinnati Reds considered inviting her to spring training in 2000 but ultimately decided to avoid the media circus. It crushed Borders, who saw that as her best opportunity to make it into affiliated ball or higher.

“It’s unfortunate. I was young at that time. I let that little setback kind of defeat me,” Borders said. “I wish I didn’t let that happen and I kept on playing, but it is what it is.”

Borders, 41, is now a firefighter and paramedic and works as a part-time scout for Major League Baseball. She’ll represent the USA as a player-manager in the Women’s Baseball World Cup in August, her first-ever experience playing baseball with other women.

Her reception is different now than it was as a player.

“At Ila Borders Day with the Saints (last summer) she was blown away because some of the players were like, ‘Hey, you want to throw us batting practice? Let’s play catch,’” Phillip Borders said. “She was like, ‘What? This wasn’t the way it was when I played.’”

Borders and Veeck envision a future with women in baseball. Japan, Canada and Australia have women’s baseball leagues. Some American minor league clubs now reserve roster spots specifically for women.

For the countless women today who can smack line drives 400 feet and just want to stand in the batters’ box … or can chase down towering fly balls to the warning track and just want to patrol a full-sized baseball outfield … or can throw 85-mph sliders and just want to stand on the mound … does it have to be so hard?

“There’s so many women out there who just want to play baseball,” Borders said.

Nothing against softball. All Borders ever wanted to do was throw overhand.

djones@columbiatribune.com

573-815-1787

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